Project InnerSpace and Future Cleantech Architects (FCA) joined forces to release the joint paper Unlocking Europe’s Geothermal Industrial Heat Potential, a first-of-its-kind analysis identifying geothermal industrial heat potential in every EU country, and 30 industrial clusters across 11 European countries that are priority candidates for geothermal heat conversion.
Key takeaways:
- Nearly 40% of the EU’s final energy demand for process heating in industry is below 200°C, i.e. at temperatures within reach of geothermal energy. Such processes include paper and food manufacturing, among others.
- Geothermal matches the requirements of industrial heat demand, which is increasingly looking for homegrown and clean sources of round-the-clock energy as a way of addressing both competitiveness challenges and climate targets.
- Clustering industrial heat demand enables a group of users to share one well field, heat network, and operator. This spreads risk and enhances the business case, especially if demand profiles are complementary and thus increase the utilization of the well. Higher usage directly translates to lower costs, since the economics of these installations are driven by capital cost.
- Europe has more geothermal than you think, thanks to next-generation technologies that open up previously inaccessible resources. The top 30 clusters identified in this study represent 2 GW_th of demand; switching to geothermal would displace around 4.3 Mt CO2 per year and €850 million in fuel spending.
The subsurface below the EU-27 countries has an estimated 18,000 gigawatts-thermal1 of geothermal heat at temperatures of 100°C or above.2 And yet, EU factories for the most part still burn imported gas to create heat for their industrial processes—and about 90% of the natural gas those processes consume is imported.
Much of Europe’s industrial heat demand is in temperature ranges that geothermal can serve directly—such as food and beverage processing, textiles, paper, and some chemical manufacturing—but geothermal energy is often overlooked in Europe because the energy source has historically held a niche role. The places that use geothermal power today almost all use conventional hydrothermal energy and are mostly found in Iceland, Italy, and Turkey.
Today, advances in geothermal systems mean developers can access subsurface heat in a wide variety of subsurface conditions, far beyond the hydrologic limitations of conventional geothermal systems. And a geothermal well supplies heat around the clock, regardless of weather or grid congestion.
This report examines both what is needed for industrial geothermal to scale across Europe and where deployment can begin now. It sets out the broader policy and market conditions needed for growth, then links geothermal resources with industrial heat demand to identify 30 priority clusters in 11 countries that could form an initial project pipeline. The 30 clusters are not an estimate of the full European opportunity; they are the locations where this analysis finds the strongest near-term case for further development.
Taken together, those sites could displace more than €850 million per year in fuel spending and avoid about 4.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year, roughly 1% of all EU industrial-heat emissions from just 30 locations. The opportunity extends well beyond that short list: A wider pool of 152 candidate clusters in 14 countries could avoid 11.0 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year, while individual industrial facilities can also develop geothermal projects outside the cluster model, as projects in France and Hungary already show. Additional opportunities will emerge as subsurface data, technology, and project economics improve.
Several policy tools already in place in Europe could support the expansion of industrial geothermal. France and Germany have developed programmes that cover part of the loss if a deep well fails to find enough heat or water. Germany has also declared geothermal an energy source of “overriding public interest,” which means authorities must give geothermal projects high priority when weighing them against other interests, such as environmental protection, in permitting decisions. The Netherlands makes subsurface data public, which in turn helps each project learn from the wells drilled before it. Denmark has measures in place to protect geothermal heat contracts from price regulation. But all of these measures were developed separately, often for single projects and conventional geothermal resources—in other words, they may not cover new geothermal technologies. Expanding the use of geothermal heat for industry will require programmes, tools, and measures that can work at the member state level and at the EU level. The EU Geothermal Action Plan, originally expected in early 2026, remains unpublished. Publishing that plan, with priority industrial clusters and a quantified trajectory for geothermal in industrial heat, would be a clear first step in this process. Alongside the identification of the European Union’s first and best geothermal opportunities, this report also identifies eight policy changes to organise the first projects, reduce early-stage risk and unlock investment, and create the conditions for geothermal to scale across Europe.
The cost of relying on imported gas became clear in 2022. When gas prices spiked, Germany’s energy-intensive industries lost 20% of their output, and the nation didn’t recover. Scaling the use of geothermal resources for industrial heat would reduce exposure to gas-price volatility and supply risk while strengthening the competitiveness of European industry.
Policy Recommendations for EU Geothermal Industrial Clusters:
- Set a clear EU direction for industrial heat.
- Turn heat demand into clusters.
- Designate a credible operato for each cluster.
- Share the risk of the first wells.
- Create a dedicated path for first-of-a-kind projects.
- Make industrial geothermal clusters financeable.
- Make permitting predictable and secure geothermal rights.
- Improve subsurface data and manage seismicity risk.